1954: A SPY STORY 7 05
slowly emerged. This was Bikbashi (Lt. Col.) Gamal Abdel-Nasser, a tall, handsome, entirely too dynamic young officer.
Ben-Gurion seems to have had from the beginning an ambivalent attitude toward this man, an attitude with which he infected the whole of Israel and which persists today. It is a mixture of admiration and hatred, a feeling that this man is more capable, and therefore more dangerous, than any other Arab leader. Underlying this was a deep conviction that peace was impossible because the Arabs were and would remain unwilling to make peace. This being so, any trend toward Arab unity, progress and efficiency-perhaps through Abd-el-Nasser-could only increase the threat to Israel. (Like most Israelis, Ben-Gurion was convinced that making peace was entirely up to the Arabs, and that Israel could do nothing to initiate it. Peace meant Arab recognition of the status quo, from which Israel could not and would not budge.)
Abd-el-Nasser was, in fact, the new face of Arab nationalism, a force which no longer could be ignored or belittled.
Another, less conscious factor may have been at work. Ben-Gurion was nearing his seventieth birthday. (Nasser was thirty-four.) Ben-Gurion may have felt that something had to be done soon before he himself became too old to lead Israel in a showdown with the Arab world.
In any event, the first problem the new Egyptian regime tackled was the eviction of the British Army from its big bases in the Suez Canal Zone. (This had been an old dream of the Egyptians. The presence of the British Army on Egyptian soil had been a constant reminder of the humiliation suffered by Egypt ever since the invasion of their country by the British in the late nineteenth century. A whole generation of young Egyptians had grown up with the dream of throwing the British out. While my friends and I were demonstrating in the streets of Tel Aviv, shouting in Hebrew, "Free Immigration-A Jewish State!" our Egyptian counterparts were demonstrating in Cairo and